modified:: 2023-10-18, 2352
up:: Durkheim Theory
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Durkheim's Freedom & Individuality

Overview

• Durkheim asserts that personality is the peculiar characteristics which distinguish us from others.
  • See #Quotes#What is Personality.
  • You can't think for yourself while thinking like everybody else.
  • If you think & act like everybody else, you can't have personality.
• Strength of Mechanical Solidarity inversely proportional to personality.
  • See #Quotes#Inverse Proportionality.
  • When Mechanical Solidarity makes you conform, you lose your personality in place of the Collective Consciousness.
    • You also lose your personal rights, see #Quotes#Literally a Thing.
• Organic Solidarity relies on interdependence of specialized functions -> More specialisation.
  • Specialisation -> Carve your own path -> More personal & individual.
    • Carve your own path: Freedom to experiment & be yourself.
      • Burden of following best practices of specialised job < Burden of conforming to society.
    • Yeah I know Durkheim is wrong here but he said so: #Quotes#Specialisation is Personality
• Members of a society bound by Organic Solidarity have more freedom & personality than those bound by Mechanical Solidarity.
  • See #Quotes#Liberating Effect.
  • Members of Organic Solidarity are different by nature so more freedom.
    • See #Quotes#Specialisation is Personality.
  • See #Quotes#The One Absolute.

Quotes

The One Absolute

"If there is one rule of conduct whose moral character is undisputed, it is that which decrees that we should realise in ourselves the essential features of the collective type." (Durkheim, 1893, pg 329)

"It is among lower peoples that it attains the greatest inflexibility… In the more advanced societies, the similarities that are required are fewer in number." (Durkheim, 1893, pg 329)

Literally a Thing

"In societies where [mechanical] solidarity is highly developed the individual… does not belong to himself; he is literally a thing at the disposal of society." (Durkheim, 1893, pg 85)

What is Personality

"Now what constitutes our personality is that which each of us possesses that is peculiar and characteristic, what distinguishes it from others." (Durkheim, 1893, pg 84)

"If we have a strong inclination to think and act for ourselves we cannot be strongly inclined to think and act like other people. If the ideal is to create for ourselves a special, personal image, this cannot mean to be like everyone else." (Durkheim, 1893, pg 84)

Inverse Proportionality

"The solidarity that derives from similarities is at its maximum when the collective consciousness completely envelops our total consciousness, coinciding with it at every point. At that moment our individuality is zero." (Durkheim, 1893, pg 84)

"at the very moment when [mechanical] solidarity exerts its effect, our personality, it may be said by definition, disappears, for we are no longer ourselves, but a collective being." (Durkheim, 1893, pg 84)

Specialisation is Personality

"The situation is entirely different in the case of solidarity that brings about the division of labour… is only possible if each one of us has a sphere of action that is peculiarly our own, and consequently a personality. Thus the collective consciousness leaves uncovered a part of the individual consciousness, so that there may be established in it those special functions that it cannot regulate." (Durkheim, 1893, pg 85)

"…the activity of each one of us is correspondingly more specialised, the more personal it is." (Durkheim, 1893, pg 85)

Liberating Effect

"The division of labour itself contributes to this liberating effect. Individual natures become more complex through specialising; by this very fact they are partly shielded against the effects of the collectivity and the influences of heredity, which can scarcely enforce themselves except in simple, general matters." (Durkheim, 1893, pg 335)

See Also